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Very interesting. I was waiting for someone to write a book that dealt with HIV and colonialism. Thank you for sharing.

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"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else."

"For decades nobody knew the reasons behind the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But it is now clear that the epidemic's birth and crucial early growth happened during Africa's colonial era, amid massive intrusion of new people and technology into a land where ancient ways still prevailed. European powers engaged in a feverish race for wealth and glory blazed routes up muddy rivers and into dense forests that had been traveled only sporadically by humans before.

The most disruptive of these intruders were thousands of African porters. Forced into service by European colonial powers, they cut paths through the exact area that researchers have now identified as the birthplace of the AIDS epidemic. It was here, in a single moment of transmission from chimp to human, that a strain of virus called HIV-1 group M first appeared".

While I am by no means an apologist for the colonialists, I fail to see how "European powers that engaged in a feverish race for wealth" are in anyway responsible for the "single moment of transmission from chimp to human, that a strain of virus called HIV-1 group M first appeared".

It's something purely biological, in the realm of virology, and hence attributing the birth of AIDS, even if a thinly veiled attempt, to Europeans disturbing traditional societies in Africa is unscientific, overly emotional and unconvincing.

Who's to say that the virus would not have crossed over from chimps to humans had the Europeans never colonized in Africa?

As for the spread of HIV, that was probably a byproduct of colonialism. But again, I don't quite understand how colonialsim is directly responsible since the vast majority of HIV infections took root starting the late 70's- early 80's, by which time colonialists had left their colonies, for the most part.

I understand that Mecch. However I did discern a distinct anti-colonial slant (which is totally valid in a different context, if it was about exploitation etc) that is also apparent in the article you linked (titled:Co­lo­ni­al­ism in Africa helped launch the HIV epidemic a century ago).

I'm just a bit wary of emotionalising and politicising an essentially biological thing.

The article I link is the entire excerpt of the same book, the book mentioned in the link by the OP.

I am on the same page as you. Hard to talk about colonialism these days without engaging in some anti-colonial slant. If a writer needs to make those points, so be it.

Not everyone fights the same wars at the same time. People stake out their positions when they are ready. Disarm, accept relativity, dualism, etc. more or less, as life goes on.

But you and I have been throughout the post-colonial theory mills, right? So we can't expect everybody to have sophisticated discourse. Specially journalists.

And HIV is so loaded. The politics of HIV over the years, so many linguistic rabbit holes its practically swiss cheese. How many years, how many lives lost to anger/fear/prejudice/revenge/greed hijacking language.

The article I link is the entire excerpt of the same book, the book mentioned in the link by the OP.

I am on the same page as you. Hard to talk about colonialism these days without engaging in some anti-colonial slant. If a writer needs to make those points, so be it.

Not everyone fights the same wars at the same time. People stake out their positions when they are ready. Disarm, accept relativity, dualism, etc. more or less, as life goes on.

But you and I have been throughout the post-colonial theory mills, right? So we can't expect everybody to have sophisticated discourse. Specially journalists.

And HIV is so loaded. The politics of HIV over the years, so many linguistic rabbit holes its practically swiss cheese. How many years, how many lives lost to anger/fear/prejudice/revenge/greed hijacking language.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

Colonialism is a matter of networks: routes, people coming and going, people moving from here to there, and having sex... In Central America STDs spreading map matches the road maps. Also in many african countries.

Colonialism? European countries are the result of multiple colonialist events, invasions, wars... we are all mixed. It is in the human nature. Native Africans, and native Americans also colonized and battled, and suffered slavery on their own, a lot of time before the arrival of Europeans.

I'd rather understand the colonialism argument in the sense of its demographical , environmental and sociological impact, instead of its cultural impact (which, by contrast, does have too much to do with the spreading of pandemia despite it is well known how to avoid transmission).

The spread of the epidemic had a number of factors that were all required. And yes - colonialism was one of them (probably chief one). If Western powers didn't colonize Africa, it would certainly never have spread. But then a lot of other factors were present that contributed to it:

Immunization drives by colonial powers against local diseases - using unsterilized syringes, leading to spread of HIV